My Angel, Castiel Chap 2
by deannawinchester22
Summary: AU, Dean and Cas are in love. Dean visits Sam and Ruby for a change of pace.


"You know, Dean, I can smell him on you," Sam says. He's leaning back into the patched old sofa we found out in front of the house down the street. I wish he would stop staring at me with those black eyes. Ruby is pressed into him so closely it seems like you can only see her eyes and her purple lipstick-smile. Sam is running his fingers through her black hair, running them up and down her short little horns.

"You spend too much time with him," she says, and she flicks her tail behind her, rhythmically. "What do you two even do together?"

"I don't know," I say. The room is dark, but it's beach weather outside; there are birds chirping. All the blinds are closed and there's a black bed sheet covering half the sliding glass door that opens up into the weed-ridden backyard. Why does it have to be so fucking dark in here? Their eyes are boring into me; these guys are my friends, but I always feel so weak under their stares. I feel like an open book, like they're flipping through the pages, smirking and whispering to each other. "Nothing unusual; normal stuff, I guess." I look around the room for help, or inspiration. There's a deer's head mounted above the fireplace, I think it came with the house. Gabriel is lying like a heap of unwashed clothes on the bamboo rocking chair across from me, he's been like that since I got here, and that was before ten. No help there. "We go to the beach most evenings, especially if the moon is out." I say, "We help out at the shelter on Wednesdays."

Ruby laughs, "Yeah, but I mean," and she licks her lips, "what do you do?" I've got to get out; I just can't take their razor sharp stares anymore.

"I need a drink," I complain as I get up from the bleached-yellow lawn chair.

"We've got Equis in the fridge," offers Sam.

"Hey man," Gabriel says, his voice croaking and dry, "get me one of whatever you're getting, huh?"

Sam and Ruby, they're always so clean and neat, but their house is filthy. It looks like a bomb went off in a middle-class yard sale. Something stinks in this place, and it's not the ragged B.O., not the creeping sourness of all the unwashed dishes and bowls full of molding food stacked high in the kitchen. It smells like sulfur here, like rotten eggs and vinegar.

The fridge creaks when I open it; its contents always remind me of the chem labs. Weird bottles and dark plastic jars filled with thick yellow and green juices. Tupperwares with troublingly inadequate tinfoil lids; the odd open can of Coke. There's some chilled beer and liquor at the back. I can hear Sam and Ruby giggling and whispering in the living room and I just know they're about to go at it. It should probably be a stiff drink, then.

I take my time searching for reagents; half a dried up lime, a plastic tray of ice cubes, and a bottle of what smells like bourbon. The label's been peeled off, so I check the color. I stir the bottle and look for bubbles forming at the surface of the brown liquid. I would have been one hell of a chemist. I shovel dirty dishes into the sink to clear room for my workspace, and I can hear Ruby in the living room cooing and breathing heavy. I wonder what Gabriel is doing, if he's watching. I wonder if he's got one hand down his greasy sweatpants; I think probably he has.

The first step is the ice cubes. I crack a tray of them and pick them out one by one. Too small and they'll be wasted, watering down the drink. Too large and they'll never get the drink cooled. Adding the bourbon is easy; just have to avoid too much splashing and churning.

Glistening tubes impregnated with vividly colored admixtures; clear, bubbling solutions surging through coiled tubes and boiling up in frothy reactions. Simple things, common and ugly, but with so much hidden potential, and so simple to bring it out to full and magical life. This was beauty, this was creation. The endless diagrams of chemical cycles had no more appeal for me than the frank anatomical illustrations of a sex-ed class do for a horny teenager.

A lime isn't just a lime; it's the sweet bitterness in your mouth that drowns out the sharp tinge of alcohol. I can hear Sam growling; the lights dim all across the house. There's a thin pall of smoke creeping into the kitchen, and the tinge of brimstone curls my lip as I squeeze the lime into my drink. Now comes the big risk that makes an experiment truly great. The wet, slapping, moaning noise in the living room escalates as I stand for several long seconds staring into the fridge, contemplating the open can of coke. The metal feels cool to my fingers; I can see no greasy lip mark around the lid. Some things you can control, some you can't. I pour the contents, whatever they might be, into my drink.

All great discoveries were made by accident; Curie and radiation, Rutherford and the atomic nucleus. Take a chance, you only live once. The liquid is a promising brown color; there are a few bubbles forming in it, presumably, but not certainly, from carbonation. The noise from the other room quiets down as I stir the concoction; the lights in the house brighten slightly. I grab Gabriel a bottle of Equis and slouch back to the living room to find Sam and Ruby lying in a heap, loosely clothed, on the floor. Sam's got purple smudges of lipstick arranged improbably all over his body, and sure enough, Gabriel is passed out, with a hand down his sweatpants. I toss him the bottle.

"I hope all those moonlit walks on the beach are worth it, Dean", says Sam, pulling his pants together, "because you have no idea what you're missing."


End file.
